`Life After Lucy' Wasn't Always Fun And Laughs For Little Ricky

Child Star Struggled For Life He Has Today

"I asked him to sign it `Little Ricky,' but he wouldn't do it," says the 61-year-old tourist from Maryland. "He probably didn't hear me."

There was a time when the man dressed in all-black and signing books here in the Christian Broadcast Network's lobby wouldn't have written the words "Little Ricky."

He used to call Little Ricky "the enemy."

It's all in the book Gladhill holds, the book Keith Thibodeaux wrote, "Life After Lucy." It's his story of stardom and ruin and renewal, which began at age 4 on the set of "I Love Lucy" and brought him to Hampton Roads last week.

But the man in black is 44 years old and no longer angry with the adorable Little Ricky Ricardo he used to play. The drumming-prodigy-turned-child-actor-turned-bad-boy-turned-Christian-rocker simply didn't hear Gladhill's request.

She's happy anyway. She was vacationing in Virginia Beach and stopped in to see "The 700 Club" ... and there was Little Ricky! All grown up and on the set with Pat Robertson and the gang.

Gripping her copy of the book, she admits to getting cable recently and taping every episode of "I Love Lucy."

When TV viewers like Gladhill last saw Thibodeaux, he was running around the streets of Mayberry as Opie's prepubescent buddy Johnny Paul Jason on "The Andy Griffith Show." This was his only steady acting job after "I Love Lucy" ended in 1960.

And until last year and the publication of "Life After Lucy," the story of Little Ricky and Big Keith hadn't been told. Many people still think that Desi Arnaz Jr. played the drum-thumping nipper. The two are about the same age, and Thibodeaux's name never appeared in the credits.

"It was something God wanted me to write," Thibodeaux says of the book. He speaks seriously and easily about a life defined by one of history's funniest women. "People could identify with what I deal with in the book, the gamut of human experience."

At age 4, Thibodeaux showed a natural talent for drumming and soon landed the role as Little Ricky. So his family moved from Bunkie, La., to Hollywood, and he headed down the great American road from obscurity to stardom and back again.

He now works as executive director of a Jackson, Miss., ballet company that features his wife and performed in Hampton last week.

Before he sits down with Ben Kinchlow on "The 700 Club," a clip rolls of a doe-eyed Mambo tyke getting the jitters about playing the drums. "Mommy," he tells his black-and-white TV mother, "I'm nervous."

"That was really me," Thibodeaux says. He explains that the show's writing reflected the actors' personalities. "I really did get nervous. They incorporated your weaknesses."

During and after his seven years on the show, Little Keith became almost a part of real-life couple Lucille Ball's and Desi Arnaz's family. He and Desi Jr. still remain close friends.

But the show ended, and Lucy and Desi got divorced. And so did Thibodeaux's parents. And after four years on "Andy Griffith," Little Keith went home to Louisiana with his mother.

As is expected of a successful child actor in Hollywood, Thibodeaux then started drinking, smoking, taking drugs and playing in rock bands. He admits that one of the lowest points in his teen-age years was watching "2001: A Space Odyssey" on LSD.

In the early 1970s, he fell into a state he describes using terms such as "the end of my rope" and "clinically depressed" and "a weird twilight zone."

"I heard of people selling their souls to the devil," he says. "I said, `Satan, if you can take me out of this situation, I'll make a pact with you.' "

Then he tells of being saved by Jesus Christ at the age of 23, of being set on a path that would lead to work with the Christian rockers David and the Giants, to the Christian ballet company of his wife's and then to his book.

And, as his "testimonial" to the CBN crowd describes, that made all the difference.

But his recent resurfacing has brought him in contact with another dark underside of society: pop culture fandom.

"Being the last surviving member of the `Lucy' show puts you in some people's eyes a notable position," he says. On a few occasions, fans shadowed his movements and learned an uncomfortable amount of information about his hotel and travel plans.

Only a handful of people show up to the post-show signing at CBN, and most of them were from the audience. He greets them with a semi-somber face and a "God bless you."

"They love Lucy," he says of the hard-core buffs he's met across the country. "They love the person that Lucy was on the show. They have attributes of her in their life, they identify with her a lot."

Many thought that Lucille Ball was "kooky and crazy, and she wasn't any of those things," he says, describing her as very businesslike.

But Thibodeaux says he's finished describing the late Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz to everybody. He's through with the talk shows and interviews. Maybe he'll start playing with a band again, he says, or just stick with the ballet gig.